CHAPTER XXII.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Richard Dyson went out to luncheon at his usual time, but failed to return. About five o'clock Mr. Melray asked for him, but no one knew what had become of him, nor did any authentic tidings of him come to hand till the following day. It was then discovered that he and Miss Glyn had gone off together, after having been married at an early hour by special license. Neither of them was ever seen in Merehampton again. It may be that Robert Melray was not ill-pleased to have the hard problem which circumstances would otherwise have compelled him to solve taken out of his hands and done with, as far as he was concerned, for ever.

Mrs. Melray the elder was never told that it was to the hand of her nephew that James Melray owed his death-blow. To her, as to the world at large, the Loudwater Tragedy remained an unsolved mystery. Neither was she ever enlightened as to that secondary crime of forgery and fraud of which her nephew had been guilty. To have told her would have answered no good purpose, but might, indeed, have had a serious effect upon her health, already hardly tried by that which had gone before. It was a quite sufficient shock to her to learn of the elopement of Dyson and Miss Glyn. Womanlike, she laid the whole blame of the affair on the girl. Doubtless she was one of those double-faced, scheming hussies who seem sent into the world purposely to spoil the lives and ruin the careers of whatever young men may not be strong-minded enough to resist their siren-like blandishments. That poor dear Richard had been both weak and foolish she could not deny; still, he was to be pitied far more than blamed. He was not the first man by many, nor would he be the last, to fall a victim to the arts of a designing woman. As long as she lived Mrs. Melray continued to think and speak of Dyson with mingled pity and tenderness, and at her death it was found that she had bequeathed him half of all she had to leave.

Long before that event took place Robert Melray had paid over to Dyson, or rather to the solicitor who represented him, the three thousand pounds willed him by the man whose death lay at his door. Had it not been for those two legacies falling in one after another, Dyson, in all probability, would have lived several years longer than he did. But for them--his wife's fortune having been quickly dissipated--he would not have been able to continue in that course of fast living, combined with hard drinking, which gradually shattered his constitution and consigned him to a premature grave while he ought still to have been in the prime of life.

The Erinyes have many ways of avenging their misdeeds on the children of men.

Within twenty-four hours of Dyson's disappearance Denia had quitted Loudwater House, never to return. She announced her intention of taking up her abode, for a time at least, with certain friends in London whom she had known during her uncle's lifetime. About a year later, she married again, by which time she had received her share of the property left by her husband. Her second husband (a blackleg with the manners and education of a gentleman) was a very different type of man from James Melray, as, later on, Denia found to her cost.

It was about the time of Denia's marriage that the final mystery in connection with the Loudwater Tragedy found its solution.

One day a young American arrived at Merehampton in search of his brother, who had been missing for upwards of a year. After some difficulty he had succeeded in tracing him as far as the little seaport, but at that point he came, for the time being, to a deadlock. Like so many of his countrymen, the missing man had been fond of adventure and change of scene. For many months he had been touring about England, chiefly on foot, and, with a view of eking out his slender means, had been in the habit of writing sketches of English life and character for one or more American newspapers, as well as occasional short stories for sundry magazines.

It would be beyond the scope of this narrative to recount how Gavin Pryce, having succeeded in picking up the missing clue, was led onward step by step till at length a shred of doubt was no longer left him that the unidentified victim of the Eastwich accident was none other than his brother Evan.

The way in which the latter had acquired his intimate knowledge of the details of the Loudwater Tragedy, as set forth by him in the MS. which fell into the hands of Mr. Timmins, was as peculiar as it was simple.

It may be remembered that the alarm raised by the housemaid Charlotte, which followed immediately on her discovery of her master's body, was responded to by a constable and a couple of strangers who happened to be passing at the time. One of the strangers in question was the young American, Evan Pryce. He it was who helped the constable to examine the body with the view of ascertaining whether life was extinct, and, a little later, assisted in carrying it upstairs. At the inquest he was called as a witness, and, being a newspaper man, the case had an exceptional interest for him in so far as it furnished him with an ample supply of "copy" for some time to come. Having used it up as far as the newspapers were concerned, the idea would appear to have occurred to him that the main incidents of the affair, if worked up into a magazine story, would not prove ineffective. Hence, in order to supply the crime with a _raison d'être_, his invention of a lover for the young wife, who finding on his return from abroad that she is married, picks a quarrel with the husband; at which point, as the reader may remember, the manuscript broke off abruptly. Whether the author had written no further when he came by his untimely end, or whether only a part of the manuscript was recovered from the _débris_ of the accident, is a question which must remain for ever unanswered. It will not have been forgotten that it was Mr. Timmins who furnished the story with an ending after a fashion of his own.

That it was as gall and wormwood to Mrs. Sudlow to have to be beholden to a woman she disliked more than anyone, and whom she had contemned and turned her back upon as the widow of a notorious felon, for the pecuniary help which had been forthcoming from no other source, may be taken for granted. But for Mrs. Winslade the Vicar would have been a ruined man. It was bitter, very bitter, to have to acknowledge that such was the indisputable fact. And then, what likelihood was there of her husband ever being in a position to pay back the sum which had been thus generously and unconditionally advanced? None at all as far as Mrs. Sudlow could see. A few pounds might be spared now and again--mere driblets, as it were--but, in the face of family expenses which could not but help growing for several years to come, it would not be possible to do more. In those days Mrs. Sudlow was a very unhappy woman.

No one, not even her husband, ever heard her mention Mrs. Winslade's name. When, half a year later, Philip and Fanny were married, no word of opposition fell from her lips; but, on the other hand, she resolutely declined to be present at the ceremony. Neither when, later on, Philip offered to find a situation for her eldest son in the counting-house of Mr. Layland did she raise the slightest objection to his doing so. It was as though her life was burdened with the weight of an obligation from which she found it impossible to rid herself.

Finally, it may be said of the "Vicaress" that, if from the date of a certain transaction Mrs. Winslade's name found no mention at her lips, neither did that of her kinsman, the Earl of Beaumaris. One seemed to have passed out of the sphere of her mental retina as absolutely as the other.

Once and once only did Fanny and Denia see each other again after the latter's abrupt departure from Loudwater House.

Late one autumn evening about a year and a half after Fanny's marriage, as she was sitting alone in the drawing-room, she was informed that a lady was waiting in the entrance-hall who wished particularly to see her, but who refused to send in her name. The untimely visitor proved to be none other than Denia Melray, now Mrs. Ferdinand Gascoigne. The two years which had elapsed since Fanny had seen her last had wrought a great change in her appearance, but not for the better. She had fallen away both in face and figure; there were dark half-circles under her eyes; while that expression of mingled candour and ingenuousness which had been one of her greatest charms in days gone by had given place to the anxious careworn look of one whose days and nights were full of trouble.

That Fanny was surprised to see her goes without saying. She did not know then, nor does she to this day, by what means Denia had discovered her address. When greetings were over and they were together in the drawing-room, Mrs. Gascoigne said: "I am here this evening, my dear, on purpose to ask you a very great favour. But where is Mr. Winslade?"

Fanny explained that her husband had gone for a couple of days' shooting to the house of a bachelor friend in the shires.

"So much the better," observed Denia in her old quick way. "Pleased as on many accounts I should have been to see Mr. Winslade again, I am more pleased that he is not here to-night. But your eyes are asking what the favour is that I want you to grant me. It is simply this: I have left my husband, without his knowledge or consent, and I want you to give me shelter till morning."

"You have left your husband!" exclaimed Fanny. "Oh, Mrs. Gascoigne!"

"Yes, I have left him, never to go back," replied Dania with a hard cold glitter in her blue-grey eyes. Then with deft fingers she unfastened a portion of her dress, and baring her left shoulder, exposed to Fanny's shocked gaze a great livid bruise. "That is where he struck me last night with his clenched fist and felled me to the ground. It is not the first occasion by many that he has struck me. But last night was the climax. Then and there I swore an oath to leave him. He did not believe me, but when he gets home from his club at midnight he will not find me there. To-day I have been making certain arrangements which to-morrow will see completed. At ten o'clock my cousin, William Champneys--the son of my late uncle--will call here for me (you see, dear, I have taken the liberty of assuming that you won't turn me into the street), and will take me down into the country to some relatives of my mother, whom I have not seen since I was quite a child."

It is almost needless to state that Mrs. Gascoigne was accorded the shelter she craved.

At ten o'clock next morning a hired brougham drove up at the door, and Mr. William Champneys was announced. Denia had already breakfasted (her troubles seemed in no wise to have impaired her appetite), and two minutes sufficed her to put on her outdoor things. Having introduced her cousin to Fanny, she seemed in a hurry to be gone. Her last words as she touched Fanny's cheek with her lips were: "I shall be sure to write to you, dear, and let you know how I am getting on." But she never did.

Two months later Mr. Ferdinand Gascoigne fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck.

Half a year later still came an Australian newspaper, addressed to Winslade, containing an announcement of the marriage of "Evan Wildash, Esq., formerly of Solchester, England, to Denia (_née_ Lidington), widow of Ferdinand Gascoigne, Esq., of London."

When Phil read the announcement aloud he and his wife could only stare at one another in blank bewilderment.

"Evan Wildash alive!" gasped Phil.

"And married to Denia at last!" exclaimed Fanny. "Of all the strange developments brought about by the Loudwater case this last one is the strangest of all."

"By the way," remarked Phil a little later, "you never told me, or else I omitted to ask, what kind of looking man was the cousin in whose charge Mrs. Gascoigne left here."

Thereupon Fanny proceeded to describe Mr. William Champneys to the best of her ability.

"Your description tallies exactly with that of Evan Wildash, as given me at Solchester. And now that I begin to call things to mind, I am nearly sure I was told by somebody that Mr. Champneys, Denia's uncle, was a bachelor. Can it be possible that the man she introduced to you as her cousin was none other than Evan Wildash himself? It would be just like one of Denia's _supercheries_ if it were so."

It was a question to which no answer was ever forthcoming.

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